Neuronal Group Selection: Conditions and Consequences: Introduction — Neuronal Group Selection: Evolution Turned Inward

Darwin’s theory of natural selection revealed life as a relational system, in which variation and differential survival produce the patterns we recognise as species, adaptation, and function. Mendelian genetics then formalised the architecture of potential, showing how inheritance structures the field of variation itself. But what of cognition? What happens when evolution’s logic is applied not across organisms, but within the organism itself?

Gerald Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection answers this question. By internalising the Darwinian programme, Edelman reconceives the brain as a selectional ecology: a dynamic network of neural groups whose interactions are governed by variation, constraint, and stabilisation. Consciousness, perception, and memory are not representations imposed on reality; they are the emergent outcomes of selectional processes — relational actualisations of potential within a living semiotic field.

This series, Neuronal Group Selection: Conditions and Consequences, explores both the preconditions that made Edelman’s insight possible and the consequences it makes possible for understanding the mind. It situates the brain not as a computer or a repository of symbols, but as a continuation of Darwinian logic, operating at the scale of thought itself.

Across the posts, readers will encounter:

• The conceptual, experimental, and semiotic preconditions for understanding the brain as a selectional system;

• How neuronal group selection reshapes our understanding of consciousness, learning, and perception;

• The broader implications for relational ontology and semiotics, showing cognition as a domain in which evolution is continuously actualised.

Viewed in this light, the mind is not merely a product of evolution — it is evolution’s reflexive realisation, a semiotic system in which relational potential is perpetually selected, stabilised, and re-actualised.